African-American
Religion: A Documentary History Project
About the Project

About the Project

The goal of African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project
is to produce a comprehensive historical interpretation of African-American
religion, from the earliest African-European encounters along
the west coast of Africa to the present day. This will be presented
in a three-part, multi-volume series combining historical narration
and representative documents. Additional documents, interpretive
commentary, bibliographies, and research memoranda will be made
available through this website.

The goals and methods of the project are explained in more
detail in the Editorial
Statement. It describes the origins and development of the
project, its scope, and its editorial methods. The statement also
explains why the project begins its story in 1441 and is divided
into the following three periods:

The project plans to publish with the University of Chicago Press
beginning in 2007 a work of three volumes, provisionally titled African-American
Religion: A Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents. A second series of up to thirteen volumes may follow.

The following material is or will
be available through this website:

1. Working drafts of some of the
broad interpretive essays to be published in the series. Currently,
a partial draft of the Editorial Statement is available.

2. Sample Documents. These include both documents
to be published in one of the volumes (together with
their interpretive introductory headnotes) and other documents
that, in whole or in part, will be omitted from the published
collection. Currently, the following documents or sets of documents are available:

3. A variety of Research Resources, compiled by the Project
as part of its work. These include both bibliographies and research
memoranda. Currently, the following bibliographical essays are
available: